stevertigo wrote:
-- David Gerard fun@thingy.apana.org.au wrote:
So what term do you suggest for the thing that is currently usefully described by the word "pseudoscience"?
I dunno- "quasiscientific," maybe. Because 'pseudo' carries a prejudicial connotation of 'falseness,' while 'quasi' carries a perhaps more accurate connotation of "almost" or "partly" being something; in this case, as something being based in science.
"Parascience" or "alternate science" are often used, and do not carry the same emotional baggage as pseudoscience. I have also seen "traditional science" in relation to subjects like astrology or alchemy that predate the development of the modern scientific method.
When you look at the abortion debate there seems to be somewhat of a truce in that the primary name for the two sides are "pro-life" and "pro-choice". Each of these is a term that the respective sides feel as acceptably representing what they stand for. If the pro-life people start by calling the other side "baby killers" there is no room for dialogue.
Whatever term we choose for what saome call "pseudoscience" must be acceptable to both sides, but especially to the side so named.
The term "pseudoscientific," to be fair, seems like a natural one to use in cases where non-scientific claims are asserted as if there was established scientific proof. Its probably more accurate to just call certain specific outlandish claims as plain scientific 'fraud,' though my guess would be that that would probably be considered POV. 'Pseudoscience' is not much different than calling something 'fraud,' though 'fraud' seems to imply deliberate deception rather than an honest claim, written in religionese, and borne of intellectual confusion (SPOV) or 'ecstatic inspiration' (RPOV).
"Fraud" would be worse because of the implications of criminality. The profit motive is often totally absent in the minds of most believers in a "pseudoscience". The people who develop these ideas are usually doing so in good faith, and they were effectively applying GFDL long before it was invented. They, no more than Wikipedia, could not control commercial applications by downstream users..
There are claims which are best described as being from the POV of the domain to which they belong: religion, philosophy, or metaphysics, etc. (ie. 'pseudoscience' is naturally in the domain of science). That alone should satisfy in almost any case I can think of. Whether String Theory should also be called "quasiscientific" of course stands out as an interesting fulcrum for Wikipediology.
Many of these subjects are like comets from a mental Oort Cloud. Like many ideas, they show up and disappear almost as quickly. A few are puzzlingly persistent and leave the germ of an idea that may be quite indirect and different from the original formulation. The inhabitants of Flatland found it difficult to understand the impact of a three dimensional object on their world. Newton depended on a set of immutable "facts" to develop his notions; he was right as far as he went, and it took two centuries before anyone seriously questioned his premises.
Ec